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The proper way to document a computer game
About Using text plus images to guide a player new to an offline game. Parent ► Principle of massive information exchange Notion Time and honored → The proper way? → Guidance overview → Construction → Beyond a tutorial clip and game advise → Wayback feature → Practical matters Time and honored Computer game programmers are on something - ego. The originally extensive black and white game manuals were actually read cover to cover by some of us despite the rumor to the contrary. Apparently writing game play guides is a form of game programmer punishment. Web postings about game playing seem to be written by ten year olds - for ten year olds? The proper way? Games are played in color - shouldn't game guides be in color? I've created single file just to figure out how to play the Civilization game stage. The offline game, Spore, has game stages: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization and Space. Each game stage has a honeymoon, game increasing difficulty thresholds and the transition to the next game stage. The illustrated guidance (left image) file's construction was interrupted by a corrupted CD so there is no content covering the transition to the Space stage. Guidance overview Better to see an obstacle coming-down-the-pike than out-of-the-blue. The images serve to show the consequences of playing a Cell stage and Creature stage of the same Spore game. The game stage records show the transition and out of the two game stages. Game difficulty increases, as expected, in moving up to the next stage of game play -Cell to Creature to Tribal to Civilization. A common game documentation (intentional?) oversight is not to adequately explain the game's (above images show a bit of it) lay-of-the-land apparently because game developers seem to think that blind experimentation on how-to-play-the-game is the most enjoyable way that a player can play the game. Even Hasbro's Civilization II suffers from this game design mindset - Hasbro spent a great deal of time providing ways of seeing the-game-situation from many perspectives but omitted critical information during certain points of the game. The game design switch to 3D emulation encouraged a tendancy to hide game information from the player Vs introducing more complex levels-of-game-play. Construction Mimicking game development strategy in explaining the game to player(s) The image on the left is a preview version of an augscend management file in a rapport (i.e. augscend content overview) file bundle - the other files in the lead to (game stage) pillar(s). That is, the game developer has to: (1) Convince you to buy the game (2) Assist you in playing the game and guide you in ways that you can provide / review (other player's) feed back about the game. The game developer may provide a web forum for the BUT it is also reasonable that player(s) can desire digested content from the web forum as well. The above threshold images only point to general events that occur when a player plays in a particular game stage - as the typical forum content shows: Game proficiency requires effort. An augscend is just another form of publishing. The process of constructing the game as a product generates plenty of content which can be restructed as electronic files forming the augscend provided for customer use. Real open source game development support would greatly improve game quality. Beyond a tutorial clip and game advise Game programmers are lazy and uncreative. The images are what a player sees at the very beginning of the Civilization game stage. Leftmost: city without any buildings. The mini-map shows the tiny world in which this game stage is played. The start of the game stage begins the stage's honeymoon - the brief time to prepare before the game tests-your-game-playing mettle. The Space stage has world(s). The game honeymoon (above images) is the God of game strategy, watching from on-high, and the piddling game player extending the initially provided game resources in preparation of the game challenges not far-in-the-wings. There is plenty of information about game resources and initial playing strategy that the game developer should be providing the player new to this game stage. My -Civilization stage game play strategy file shows what game players are not receiving as game documentation. Once again: Game programmers are lazy - there is ample evidence that game programmers don't use coffee to keep going.. I suspect that current game programmer(s) are so enamored with adding game gimmicks that there there is little thought about appropriate (game play depth) ways to introduce difficulty. That is, make the game harder by hiding information - a properly designed game really doesn't need a cheat mode - something even Hasbro is guilty. Wayback feature Are computer games to be fun OR game programmer politic? Why does final game success require witnessing game developer self admiration? Game programmers seem to enjoy punishing players for making mistakes - The I am God and you are a puny mortal syndrome. The original Civilization versions allowed 'Wayback' - replaying (multiple game saves) to an earlier part of game AND undoing some play choices that evolved-badly. Waybacking (Descending save name order) helps a player develop better playing strategy. How is it fun to have to restart from scratch if you made some bad play choices? That game God is on the lookout to zap the player if there is an opportunity - why isn't that game playing knowledge made available to the player if the player wants the information? Its true, isn't it? - Game programmers are lazy. Practical matters Managerial concerns about image inventory, re-use and revision.Doing text plus image content is not just finding / creating an image and plugging it into an electronic file - an image tells a story and the surrounding text points out what story the image is telling the person reviewing the electronic file. My -Civilization stage game play strategy (guide) file flows: Transitions: Earlier game stage(s) Honeymoon: Starting game → The Honeymoon Action: Claim geyser(s) → Buy land vehicle → Course correction → Land vehicle actions → Remedy nation → Consolidate → Claiming sea spice geysers → The world The 'Civ strategy' pivot (sub-folder to the Spore pillar) folder uses 'Page' sub-folder(s) to hold (some images used more than once) the jpeg images inserted into the guide file. The -Civilization stage screen images file shows the name and order of the images that are imbedded within the guide file. The idea is to use existing information about the guide file to assist its construction and possible future revisions to the guide file. Most of the images used by this article came from the 'Civ strategy' pivot sub-folder. The augscende that the -Individual to individual electronic communication article discusses is a series of augscend(s) so many images are re-used when convenient. Welcome → Nugget → Rookie → Galactica → Agenda augscend(s) Are managed by the -Insertion points & -Descriptions files because all inserted images (web download files kept differently) are kept in the (ascending) -Images folder, some images are parents to other images and each augscend Inside file lists the images used.